The "Technology Show and Tell" idea is to get a group in front of a big screen or projector. Then, we divide the available time up among those who want to discuss things they're working on at their jobs, side-projects...or even just share some interesting video or website from the Internet.
To get the ball rolling, I'm soliciting at least one presenter in advance (to make sure somebody will be sharing). This month's volunteer is...*me*. I'm going to show you what bits I can resurrect of the application framework that I've named "Benzene". I'll explain why it's called that in my talk. :)
Just like Scott said when presenting Scott's Mysterious Operating System, I'd also say of this project: "it's been off and on for around 12 years, but more off than on". I've rewritten it a few times (in the last iteration it was switched to use Qt). It's in pieces on the factory floor at the moment, but I just got it to compile after two years of neglect; so it would be great to share and get some feedback from the group on what I'm doing.
I've found precedent for some of my ideas in initiatives like Carnegie Mellon's Amulet...such as making undo and redo an automatic feature of all programs using the framework. But I go further with those ideas (such as thinking of undo/redo as just being part of a persistent branching version control structure on the document). I also feel there are some original parts, which range from things like being able to suspend state in mid-mouse-stroke:
http://hostilefork.com/2007/11/25/lost-focus-placeholder/
...to putting lots of UUID-based sensors in your code to enable automatic triage of unexpected conditions, which I've open-sourced separately:
There's also some fairly key functionality that makes it easy to do background processing and reflect it in the display...even being able to show progress in the rendering during a mouse drag. I've open-sourced a piece of that too:
http://hostilefork.com/thinker-qt/
I've only reserved a small room for this (for 3 hours), so I'm limiting the sign-up to 20 people. If by some chance it does fill up but you would have RSVP'd, then please RSVP anyway so you're on the waitlist. Even if no one cancels, having the data will help in planning future Show & Tells (or scheduled lectures).
Also: if you would like to have come but the time doesn't work it would help if you mentioned a time that did in a "No" RSVP.
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